Land of the Free, Home of the DEAD
by NikolaiEvans115
Summary: The only sound audible was the crackle of burning flesh as we stood and stared at the mounds of flaming corpses of the things that had once been human. "Is...Is it over?" "No." Jake said, making my heart sink in my chest. "This is just the beginning..."
1. Act 1

A/N: Hope you like :3 also 'Mars Area Highschool' is a real highschool in Pennsylvania, where I go to school so yeah, just clarifying a bit! Also, all CoD WaW fans, don't punch me in the face!

Act 1: _**'Representatives of the DEAD'**_

_"Of course, the first place we headed as the world fell apart around us was the band room."_

Two teenagers sprinted along the hallway of the two floor high school, panting and looking back over their shoulders as if they were running from something which, of course; they were. Among them was a tall, thick-framed boy in a tattered, blood stained wrestling jersey; which read "Dempsey" across the back in bold white letters. He had rugged, hardened features as if he had been carved from a block of stone; and sandy blonde hair that sat in a shaggy buzz cut on top of his head. His eyes were a dark blue, almost black color; and some scruffy shadow above his upper lip and around his chops suggested that he hadn't shaved that morning.

A female ran with him, her dark, choppy ebony hair falling around her face in a tangled curtain as she pushed herself to run faster; muttering something worriedly to herself in a light Russian accent.  
>Her eyes at the moment were like that of a cornered animal's: electric blue and bright with fear, but shining also with the determination to fight if need be. The girl had an exotic look about her, with deep, emotional eyes and some freckles splashed across her nose and cheeks. She wore baggy burgundy sweatpants and a tight, cutoff tanktop that showed her navel. It read "Got vodka?" across the chest.<p>

Suddenly a man rounded the corner, walking with a slight limp. A blank look was plastered on his face, and his dress shirt was ripped and the left leg of his slacks was stained red from the inside. His mouth hung ajar and his eyes didn't appear to actually register the pair of teens, rather it was like he was looking right through them.

_**SShhkk.**_

The boy drove a pair of scissors into the man's heart, kicking him savagely against the lockers where it slumped to the ground. No, not a man...It was fairly obvious that this entity was far from human as it hauled itself up with an animalistic groan and started shuffling after the teens, the pair of scissors still protruding from its chest where its heart should have been; droplets of blood falling to the linoleum floor after dripping off the twin silver blades lodged in its ribcage. It's a funny thing about the phrase 'should've been'. That thing_ should've_ been a person, but it _wasn't._ Those scissors _should've_ killed it, but they _hadn't._ Their friends all _should've_ been alive, but they _weren't._

To add to the dilemma, 4 more of them were advancing around the corner; eager to the prospect of the teens flesh in their untasting mouths. Some were dressed as they had been in life; in the neat, formerly clean cut dress clothes that staff usually wore. Others were wearing football uniforms, one a letter jacket.

" _It's like something out of a horror movie or video game, but it's real. These things used to be our friends, our peers our teachers. At first, we didn't know what to call them. Zombies, monsters, nothing like that seemed right. And so _they_ are 'them'."_

Just then a lean, muscular Japanese teen emerged from the double doors of the band room. He had a short, shaggy cut of bristly black hair. His arms and legs were relatively skinny, but thick cord-like veins showed through the bronzed skin; showing his athleticism. His head was back, his chin up; his deeply tanned features deep with hate, and intimidation radiated from him; even though his profile showed no emotion whatsoever, his eyes shone with an imperialistic fire, as cold as the shining razor-sharp steel of a samurai's katana. That just made it all the scarier.

He ran his calloused palm over the length of a dull steel cutlass that the school's color guard used for marching band competitions.

"Not as good as my real imperial saber, but it will have to do, I suppose..."

"Nice choice, Takeo. A freaking prop!" Dempsey spat. "Fuck this place. What we need is GUNS!"

"I agree with Jake," The girl admitted.

Dempsey sneered at the other boy."See, Nikita's actually got a brain."

The Japanese boy, Takeo, shook his head. "You abandon what little honor you have left, Dempsey." He glared at Jake. "For at least _I _have honor!" one of the zombies lunged for Takeo, aiming a bite at his neck. With the practiced ease and skill of a seasoned swordsman, the saber arced up and around his head, biting through one of its rotting cranium and sending bits flying. Takeo glared murder at them as he brought the dull steel back home, growling,

"My flesh will _not _be devoured!"

Another flash of steel rent the air and the Japanese teen brought the dull steel blade back down, splitting in half what was left of his head.

Dempsey exploded out of the band room, holding a heavy full-metal music stand over his head like a mace. "Eat this, motherfuckers!" he cackled as he swung downwards at ones heat with all of his force. Shards of bone flew as its jaws were smashed together with hundreds of pounds of force; its teeth shattering. Blood and gray matter fell to the floor in a cascade of red as the monsters brains were displaced from its head. He swung once more like he was hitting a home run, holding the stand side on.

With a stomach churning 'chunk'ing noise, the thin metal side of the music stand severed the zombie's spinal cord, decapitating it. Meanwhile Takeo was dispatching the other two. (Twice as quickly and a lot less showy than Dempsey, he would add.) For good measure, Jake brought the flat face of the music stand down on the headless corpse with the audible crack of ribs. He stood to his full, reasonable height; smiling at the girl crazily with his teeth bared. He wiped the splatters of blood from his face with a well muscled arm.

"That. Was. SWEET!"

"Yes, comrade," The girl agreed, rolling her eyes at him and remarking in that strange accent. "He looks _so _much prettier without a head. Come, tell Takeo to follow. I need to get some things from the band room."

/\/\/H.O.T.D\/\/\

The two teenage boys stared uncomprehendingly at the oddly shaped instrument case in front of them, labeled, "_Mars Area high school, flugel horn NO.1_" Takeo addressed Nikita first.

"A 'Flugel Horn'?..." The Japanese teen spoke the strange words alound, looking questioningly at the Russian girl. "You plan to dishonor the dead by killing them with a _'Flugel Horn'?"_

"No, dumbass." She replied with scorn. "I plan to kill them with what is inside the case." She flipped open the two metal clasps, taking out the shining brass instrument and tossing it carelessly to the floor; leaving them staring at the felt case lining that held the cut out indentation shaped like the instrument. Nikita traced her fingers around the edges of the felt, before stopping on a small protruding tag of the stuff. Dempsey watched with curiosity as she dug her fingernails under the edge of the lining and wrenched it free of the plastic case, exposing the contents underneath.

Takeo nearly had a heart attack when Nikita lifted the concealed Tokarev TT-33 handgun from the hidden compartment in the case, 3 extra magazines clutched in her other hand; which she promptly stuffed into the pockets of her baggy sweatpants. The Japanese junior choked. "You had this thing in school the whole time!"

"Pretty much." Nikita replied, blowing a puff of air out between her lips in annoyance as she pulled back the slide.

_BANG! BANG!_ The pistol spoke twice, the rounds slicing through the air a foot from Jake's head.

Behind him, the zombie fell; two ragged craters in its head gushing blood as its knees buckled and its cranium hit the floor.

Takeo comprehended the corpse for a moment. "…Oh my."

Jake rolled his eyes, convinced that it was sheer luck. "Wow, two headshots in a row? Well, obviously that was _completely _intentional…"

"Damn right it was." She lied, flipping him the bird with one fingerless gloved hand.

"The dead approach." Takeo said solemnly. "The gunfire will attract even more of them if we doddle."

"Come on. We need to get to our development or else we're never gonna survive this shit. We'll be cornered by them eventually and I doubt we'll be able to fight our way out of it with a music stand and a few TT 33 magazines."

"This sounds like good plan." Nikita agreed.

"Yes, we will go to our homes." Takeo seconded, nodding as he pried open the band rooms only window.

/\/\/H.O.T.D\/\/\

"_DIE, schweinhund!"_

Ahead of them in the middle of the road, a teenage blonde girl was fighting for her life; and, by the looks of it not having a completely un-enjoyable time of doing so.

A grim smile was plastered to her soft features, the manic light of combat and murder shining brightly in her eyes, which seemed to shift from dark gray to inky black. Her blood-splattered hair of the lightest blonde whipped around her as she fought ferociously, wielding her weapon: a massive, machete sized Bowie knife with a knuckleduster handguard.

It was drenched in gore, with a deep blood channel running through the thick blade. The knuckleduster handguard had a slight curve to it, resembling a cog or gear cut in half. The girl also was apparently stronger than she looked, as the knife looked extremely heavy; as well as extremely sharp, judging by the severed limbs and angry donors surrounding her; pushing her back further and further.

Wordlessly, Takeo readied his dull color guard saber and charged, closing the distance between them quickly and easily with his long legs. Dempsey rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, you go save that chick Takeo!" The senior called after him. "And why don't you just yell 'Banzai' and blow yourself the fuck up, while you're at it!"

Takeo had only killed one of them when the girl hacked down the last one beside him. They were soon joined by Nikita and Jake, who found the other two to be getting along rather well.

"Umm," she blushed. "Thank you…"

The Japanese teen bowed. "Takeo Masaki."

The girl smiled, remarking in heavily German accented English. "Takeo. That's a nice name."

The junior in question only grunted in response, as blushing would have been equal to eternal dishonor.

"Yeah, stop flirting, Tak. And just who the hell are you?" Asked Dempsey roughly.

"I…" The blonde girl dabbed a spot of blood from her face which, to Dempsey's horror, she _licked _rather sensuously from the tip of her finger."…am Samantha Maxis. Call me, Sam, please."

"Uuhh, yeah. I'm your local badass Jake Dempsey and you already know Chinaman here," he jerked his thumb in Takeo's general direction, to which he exclaimed a rather indignant "I am _not _from China!" before for turning to Nikita. "Yeah and this is Niki."

"Your…?" Sam prompted.

"Russian stereotype?" Dempsey offered.

"Dog?" Takeo joked, barely restraining laughter.

She punched both the boys in the gut, turning to the other girl and gesturing to the Bowie knife she held. "Where did you get this monster?"

Samantha sniffed, her dark eyes glistening. "A parting gift from my father. Sadly, he was bitten and I was forced to slice off his head…"

There was silence as Takeo looked backwards in the direction of the high school, where columns of thick black smoke were spiraling into the air. Everywhere they looked, all sense of sanity and order was falling apart and being replaced by disorder and confusion. The air was alive with screams in the distance; mingling with the sound of madness and the thrum of utter chaos.

"Listen up."Jake said roughly. "We can't waste time fucking around here. We'll all get to know each other later, that's all well and good; but right now we have to keep our priorities straight. We need real weapons to fight. To stay alive. To kill all of the…mon…zom…Urrggh. Freakbags."

Nikita nodded sagely. "Because I don't that this is going to get better any time soon. It's going to get worse. Much worse."

"Okay. Takeo, go to your place; and Nikita go yours. Get any guns you have or anything else that will help you kill these things. Sam'll come with me, I guess. Meet back here when theres too many of them."

Around 20 minutes later, Nikita and Takeo converged near Jake's house; sporting their new tools of destruction.

With true weapons, Takeo looked intimidating enough to kill them by just looking at them. He now wore two or three katanas of various lengths stuffed into a tightly bound sash about his waist, along with two more double-handed katanas slung across his back in an X-shaped fashion. A detective style handgun holster was strapped under his arm on the left side of his chest. A mostly empty backpack sat at his feet.

"What do you think of _these _toys, eh?" She asked, smirking.

Takeo caught his breath. He would never admit this, even under pain of death, but Nikita had never looked so terrifyingly beautiful. A modern AK-47 assault rifle was dangled over her shoulder on its gun strap, along with a strange instrument in a crescent shaped case: a silver arced sickle with a wooden handle. In one hand she held a short submachinegun with a wooden stock and drum magazine. Its muzzle was comprised with a multitude of air cooling perforations so that the barrel itself was visible. Takeo recognized it from one of the many books he had read from his freshman year till the present: a PPSH-41.

Takeo gulped. "Are those things automatic?"

"Dah? No, the AK is a semi-automatic replica. But this," she caressed the barrel of the other weapon. "Is real. Straight from Eastern Front in 1942, my friend. It was great grandfather Nikolai's." She snickered jokingly. "He was expert zombie killer."

Takeo stared at her blankly, making her roll her eyes.

"It was a joke, dumbass."

Takeo shrugged indifferently, not feeling much remorse at the loss of the joke's humor upon him. "Let us go find our American part."

"You have to carry this, though." Nikita smirked as she tossed him an army style duffle bag, which almost knocked him on his butt and winded him as it caught him in the stomach.

Takeo choked. "What in the name of the Emperor is _in _this thing, your great grandsire Nikolai?"

"No, that's all the ammunition we had in our entire house. Parents weren't, by the way."

Meanwhile, Jake and Sam were inspecting his house and looking for the large stash of weapons that they knew would be there.

Jake grunted, picking up the hand-written note that sat on the coffee table in the relatively neat house. He scanned it quickly.

_Dear Jake,_

_Have gone to kill some freakbags. Left most of the guns in the locker, you're on your own for now so try your best not to die. Be back whenever,_

_Dad_

Jake raised his fist to the sky in irritation. "Fuck you, pops!" He growled. "SAM! You got the locker open yet!"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "You have zis gun locker of yours locked up as tight as ze goddamn Pentagon!"

"I'll see what I can do, okay?"

"Shouldn't you know where the keys are? It's your locker, after all." Samantha asked in annoyance.

Jake turned on his heel and walked out of the house towards their garage without another word, grumbling under his breath as he realized that he didn't, even though he probably should have. She smirked at his retreating form. "And just where are you going now?

Dempsey stared at his feet, mumbling angrily. "To get some stupid bolt cutters…"

A few minutes later they stared at the contents of the locker, which, in reality was more like a walk-in closet. Jake had brought an array of various backpacks and reinforced steel gun cases.

"Sam has never seen….SO MANY guns…"

"Yeah, yeah." He grabbed a handful of assorted handguns, including a stolen SWAT Glock 18, an enormous .44 magnum revolver, a souvenir replica Luger P'08, and a classic army Colt 1911. He then grabbed about five dry boxes of assorted caliber handgun ammunition and stuffed that in the same backpack.

"Okay…Now we have to find some way to carry these rifles…"

He clipped a leather sling to the M-1 Garand and draped it over his shoulder, folding the bipod on a scoped AR-10 and setting it in a metal guncase.

"Here." Jake handed the girl a classic Vietnam style M-16, to which her strange eyes widened in anticipation. "Use this."

She hefted the weapon, admiring the weight of the cold steel frame as she imagined the utter devastation that it could wreak on 'them'.

She removed the magazine from the receiver, marveling at the deadly pointed brass charges.

"Ooohh…Samantha's been a _naughty _little girl this year. She always gets the best toys though…" she purred.

Jake cringed. "Maybe I should give you a smaller gun. Do you know how to shoot?"

"Yes, my daddy worked with guns a lot and I learned by watching him. But I've never actually _shot."_

"Well, that's better than a girl who doesn't even know what a gun is. I'm sure you'll do fine. Come on, we're gonna meet back with Tak and Nikita."

As the two teens stood, Jakes eye was drawn to the strange girl. Specifically a blotch near her collarbone, like a birthmark; it was left visible by the tattered tank top she wore. No, not a birthmark. It was definitely a tattoo of some sort, not unlike a brand; it looked as if it had been burned into her skin, and it sat just above the skin of her left breast and resembled the letters '935'.

Samantha caught him staring and shifted the strap of her tank top so that the mark was hidden, and her face drooped into an annoyed frown. Not because she thought that he was checking her out; she was well endowed for her age and was fairly used to it. She had assumed that he had seen her mark, and he had. She was glad that Jake had seen her mark rather than Takeo or Nikita, as Jake would probably forget by the end of the day.

As the four climbed into Jake's pickup truck, an enormous Ford with a full size bed and four person cab, with double rear wheels. Jake and Nikita were the cab and Takeo and Sam in the bed along with all of their gear, guns, and the limited food they had.

"Where to?" Jake asked the group collectively as he started the truck.

"Baton Rouge." Nikita replied suddenly. "My brother lives there and he owns the biggest guns you could possibly have that are legal. And some that aren't. We're going to have to take the highways to get there, but it will be worth it once we have all that firepower at our disposal."

Looking about at the entire civilized world falling apart around them, and the madness taking over, the teens weren't really able to come up with any reasons to oppose the Russian girl's plan. At this point, any undead infested part of the world seemed pretty much identical to one another.

"The guns are big, then…?" Jake asked hopefully, apparently wanting some clarification.

"Yes, comrade. I promise."

The day was turning dark, the twilight mixing indistinguishably with the fires of the city as they sped away to God knows where, if there even _was_ a God anymore. As far as they were concerned, the world had ended.

The blonde girl scowled in the dark as the truck bounced up and down.

"_I will destroy that evil man Richtofen for taking Daddy away from me, and rip out his heart before his eyes." _Samantha thought. "_Do you hear me Edward? The blood of the world is on _your _hands, and I will make you __**pay for it…"**_

_**ACT 1 End~**_

**A/N: Also for everyone's information Samantha is a freshman but didn't go to Mars high. Takeo is a junior, Jake is a senior, and Nikita is a sophomore.**


	2. Act 2

**A/N: Sorry, not in Samantha's POV. Sue me.**

**Act 2: '**_**Burying the DEAD'**_

_3 days later; somewhere near Baton Rouge, Louisiana-_

"Damn, they're everywhere!" Dempsey growled through clenched teeth, jerking the wheel of the truck to the right as one of the walking dead shuffled into the path of the speeding vehicle.

Samantha was thrown against the side of the pickup truck's bed at the exact same time the M16 kicked against her shoulder, firing a single round that zipped harmlessly off the pavement next to the once-human that she'd been aiming for.

"UGH, fuck Dempsey! Learn to drive sometime, vy don't you!"

There was a metallic crunch as Jake ran down a body standing in the road, chunks of raw red meat and parts of limbs sailing through the air. Takeo hung off the passenger side of the truck, holding onto a handle inside the cab. He blew a puff of air out of the side of his mouth, narrowing his eyes against the sun to pick out the monsters staggering towards them on the horizon. He was out of his element.

"_To 'run and gun'…"_ He thought. _"…is dishonorable."_

Like a flash of lightning, his right hand wielding his katana lashed out; catching one staggering beast in the neck at roughly 70 miles per hour, the combined force of the trucks momentum and the swing easily severing the thing's head from its torso.

"Suck on this, hellpigs!" Nikita spat, standing up in the pickup bed and cradling a tinted green glass bottle. A few feet away, squinting down the iron sights of the M16, Samantha could smell the bottles contents. She smiled, taking an appreciative whiff. Gasoline.

Fire began to bubble from the neck of the bottle as Nikita flicked up a flame on the lighter to the gasoline soaked rag that protruded from it. Her eyes danced over the small clumped groups of them that shuffled along after the truck as she mulled over where the best place to throw it would be. Their sunken, pale milk colored eyes followed the retreating teenagers with a look that was devoid of any perceptible emotion save for one: hunger.

The Russian girl hurled the flaming bottle in a high arc with a masterful home run-style pitch. The Molotov exploded at their feet, bursting into a devastating mini-storm of orange and purple flame. The undead things seemed to ignore the blistering flame that clung to them, burning their tattered, blood-stained clothes from their gaunt; rotting frames. They kept walking forward, aware only to one animalistic need: they needed to eat.

_**POW! POW!**_

The body of one of the closer ones jerked backwards, grunting as a bullet took it in the shoulder; this was followed by a 'crunch' as the next round pitted a crater in its skull, a streamer of beautiful, viscous red splashing skyward.

Samantha bared her teeth in a grin that was half of satisfaction at her accuracy, half of the pleasure she derived at the brief suffering of the thing. Her smile drooped as she pondered, _"Hmm, but can they even _feel _the pain? Not as good as if they were alive…"_

She removed her eye from the iron sights as the flaming corpse crumpled to the ground some 150 yards away. "Teehee! Guns are fun!~"

"_Silly German girl."_

The Russian teen slung the AK47 off her slender shoulder, sliding a classic black banana style magazine into the receiver and pulling back the slide with practiced ease; the wind whipping her dark ebony hair about her face. She kneeled down next to the blonde German girl, taking a rest on the top of the pickup gate as the truck sped forward.

Spying the silhouette of a limping human in the distance, Jake grinned wolfishly as he floored the accelerator, the truck's engine roaring like a lion as he steered the truck into just the right path to bring it on an intercept course with the single undead beast.

"Chew on this, freakbag!"

_Whumph. _The steel of the truck's grill crumpled as the walking carcass was demolished, the heavy vehicle plowing into it with such force that its arms and legs were sent flying as it was smashed by the tons of rolling steel. Jake watched as the corpse rolled past the truck in a blur of red, flesh and clothing being torn as it scraped against the hot pavement. Flicking his gaze back to the road, his dark blue irises widened in horror before he slammed on the breaks; finding his voice.

"AW, SHIT!"

Before him the two lane road was clogged with cars, some burning, most with doors ajar or half off the road. A few had collided with each other or had ran off the road and smashed into the faces of the road side businesses. Aside from the problem of the road being blocked, a thickly packed mob milled about in the crashed automobiles and trucks. A small group seemed to be attacking a minivan. The car alarm was blaring as the undead hissed and moaned at the vehicle. Biting with open mouths against the glass of the windows and pounding with rotten fists against the steel doors. More were pushing and shoving to get into the back of a half-open horse trailer, their sheer weight and numbers and combined strength rocking the thing and the pickup truck it was hitched too. The inside of the trailer was a roiling mass of limbs, blood and meat. The scared whinnies of others of the animals trapped inside were hardly audible over the screaming and the meer sound of that they made eating with their faces and the ripping of flesh.

"_Dear God…" _Dempsey thought as the truck ground to a halt. "_How many are there?"_ He tried a quick scan of the stumbling, groaning hordes; trying to estimate their numbers. 10, 15, 20…No, 30…

"Fuck." He swore aloud, losing track and vowing that someday he would dig up the asshole who invented math and give him a kick in the balls sometime soon.

God, this sucked. They had somehow managed to get to fucking Louisiana without a map, and now this. What a great day.

Several of their heads whipped around at the sound of the trucks tires squealing, hunks of blood-red, raw meat falling from their gaping mouths or clenched in their hands; blank eyes searching hungrily for their next meal. There was silence for a moment as time stood still, then one monster stood straight; Jake shivering as the hooded eyes peering out of the disfigured face locked with his own. Then it screamed and sprinted forward.

In a dance of shining steel, Takeo had already severed both of its arms and floored it with a piston-hard kick to the chest. At first it struggled to stretch its neck and bite his leg as he stood with one foot planted atop it. The point of the katana straight through its skull calmed it and it was made still. The dead stood confused for a moment, comprehending him as if saying "_Did he _really _just kill one of us?" _as Takeo casually wiped the blood and muscle from the swordblade onto the dead man's threadbare polo.

"Girls," Jake whispered to the two teens in the pickup, who were already standing, guns limp at their sides and gawking at the mob ahead of them. "Get ready to run."

The Japanese transfer student challenged the others with dark eyes like black steel, daring more to attack. Time once again came into session as the horde left the old kill and charged, limbs windmilling about in a haphazard run towards them as they screamed and grunted for blood.

Drawing the antique Japanese Nambu handgun from its holster as if he had all day, he calmly pulled back the slide and popped two rounds into the head and chest and head of the forerunner, running the second beast through and finishing that one with a single additional round in its head as he pulled his katana free. Nikita shook her head, returning from her daze, and began firing indiscriminately into the charging mass of bodies; finding with relief that Samantha was doing the same beside her.

With so many of them packed so close together, it was hard not to miss. Bullets immediately found their mark among the monsters in the horde, splashing red into the air left and right as the deafening crack of gunfire filled their ears.

"TAKEO!" Dempsey screamed, unholstering the Colt 1911 pistol at his belt as he gripped it by its barrel and shattered the windshield with it. "Get your ass in this truck THIS INSTANT!"

BOOM! BOOBOOM! Jake fired a heavy .45 caliber round into a fiend's eye as it began to climb up the grill of the truck, mangling its head as Takeo slammed the door; Dempsey discharged a few more rounds into the multitude of flesh eaters, almost simultaneously stomping the gas pedal into the floor.

"RRARghh!"

The pickup did a burnout for a split second before knocking Nikita and Samantha on their butts in the pickup bed as the vehicle sped into the mass, a blur of red as they were run down, being smashed under the truck as the air came alive with the screams of the dead, the shattering and crunching of bone, and the sickening squish of heads popping underneath the tires.

The truck sped left, making a U-turn straight through them and succeeding in turning the truck around at least. "You're lucky you didn't fucking get bitten!" Dempsey remarked with a glare to Takeo as he spun the wheel. As the truck spun, Samantha gave an unhinged looking grin to one of the monsters reaching for them in the pickup bed. With a malicious thrust she drove the barrel of the M16 into its eye socket with a disgusting squelch, splattering both herself and Nikita with flecks of gray matter and blood as she pulled the trigger, its cranium bursting. The Russian teenager looked on in horror at the crazed look in Samantha's eyes and the sadistic smile on her face, watching the thing fall only to see that the other girl had blown a hole straight through its head the size of a fist.

The gunshot echoed throughout the area, off of buildings, reverberated through the entire neighborhood. Inside cars, houses, restaurants, more animals, once human, perked up at the sound. They stood, pinpointing where the noise had come from.

_FOOD…_

"Damn!" Jake swore, revving the engine and shifting gears. The truck was going nowhere and they had gained virtually no ground.

"Shit…" Nikita muttered, taking the risk of a second to look down to the wheels at what was slowing them. She turned, calling to Jake in the driver's seat. "_Der'mo_, they're guts are slowing us down!"

"The entrails and blood do not provide enough purchase or friction for us to move, it coats the asphalt! We'll have to fight!"

"Shit…" Jake looked to his left and right, sizing up their chances. The dead were advancing quickly, too quickly.

"I—Oh, _fuck_!" Dempsey stood up in the driver's seat, banging his head on the roof and forgetting that he was in fact sitting in a truck surrounded by walking dead people and not outside at the shooting range. Well, at least he wasn't outside, anyway. "I mean…I have an idea!" he amended, rubbing his head angrily.

Takeo rolled as eyes as the horde began to shake the truck, pressing against the chassis from outside. "Dempzey has an idea. Oh, God help us." He lamented in mock horror, more in awe that Dempsey had had an idea in the first place rather than the fact that it may very well get them all killed.

"Fuck off, zipperhead. Just listen up."

A few minutes later we find Nikita sweating bullets as the truck was rocked back and forth, she and Samantha huddled together towards the back of the pickup bed; trying to escape the countless hands reaching into the bed to get at them, constantly grasping as they struggled to climb over each other and get into the truck. The two teens had long since abandoned shooting into the crowd, it only seemed to aggravate them and add more fuel to the fire; increasing their numbers with every shot exponentially. Nikita inwardly thanked God that Jake and his father had added giant aftermarket wheels to the truck making it about a foot and a half taller. They could probably reach into the bed of the pickup had it been the height of your average pickup truck and they would be dead.

This was evidenced by the gradual trickle of flesh-eaters walking towards the truck at a leisurely pace, sniffing the air for the blood or meat that they were certain would be there. After all, every single one of them knew that noise meant food.

"Okay." Dempsey whispered to the girls, startling them as he spoke through the sliding cab window that led to the pickup bed. "Here's what we'll do." He handed them a large red plastic can through the window. As Jake dropped the container into Samantha's arms, she felt the familiar shift of its contents and the swish that it made. Two similar shades of blackish-blue irises met as Jake and Sam locked eyes.

"Gasoline."

Jake repeated the process with 6 or 7 of the nozzled cans, until they were stacked inside of the bed with the two girls. "Wait a second, Tak and I are coming around. Start pouring that gas onto the freakbags. Give em a good bath and spread it out."

Within a few minutes Takeo and Jake had broken through the skylight and were standing in the back of the pickup bed with the girls and pouring gracious amounts of gasoline right into the gaping mouths of the undead which now were so great in number that they threatened to tip the truck. Once the cans were empty and the monsters that surrounded them thoroughly doused from head to toe in gasoline, the four teens stood assembled in the pickup bed.

Dempsey sported an M-1 Garand in both hands, with the scoped AR-10 he had brought slung across his back on its sling. Samantha wore one of the backpacks containing mostly ammunition across her shoulders along with the broad case containing her Bowie Knife, and held her M-16 reloaded in both hands, a few spare magazines stuffed in her pockets. Nikita wore another one of the backpacks the group possessed, this one containing the limited food and water that they contained. Her AK-47, instead of ready in her hands, was slung across her back as well along with her sickle; replaced by her locked and loaded PPSH-41, just in case things got particularly nasty. And finally Takeo was equipped with his standard, fearsome menagerie of katanas; the longest two of which were strapped in the same X across his back. He wore the group's final backpack, which was stuffed with the 4 handguns from Jake's house and the Tokarev TT33 that Nikita had brought from school, along with the pitiful amount of medical supplies that the group possessed.

"Uhh, Jake, comrade, I love you like a brother and all but dis seems like very stupid idea." Nikita muttered, staring down into the faces of the dead, who were still occupied with the task of overturning the truck.

"It'll work. If it doesn't…" He stared down at the corpse of one of the horses from earlier, which was being set upon still by a mini-mob of the creatures as they tore the flesh from the animals bones with their hands, their teeth; some being caught up in the feeding frenzy and beginning to attack each other in their blood induced haze. "…Well, try not to think about that. If worse comes to worse, I'll hold them off while you guys get away."

"It's time," Takeo said solemnly. "The dead grow restless."

Sure enough, the once-human beasts that surrounded the truck were growling at them, their mouths opening and closing, and you could tell that they were growing impatient. And hungry.

"On the count of three, I'll lower the tailgate." Dempsey said. "Nikita, make sure you have the lighter ready. Everyone else, concentrate your fire into the mob at the tail gate. Clear a path, and as soon as you can get through without getting bitten, GO. After that, we run and…Uh…Hope to God you can figure something out quick. Then, Nikita, you know what to do."

"One…Two…**Three**!"

The air was alive with gunfire as the tailgate dropped and the undead lunged to get up into the truck, only to be blown down by the torrent of lead from the teenagers' guns.

"MOVE, NOW!" Tank jumped down first, gun still blazing, and landed on the corpses closest to the truck with a crunch. Whether they were dead or not, he didn't know, he could only hope that they were; as checking would be complete and utter suicide.

"KksSShhh!" a carcass in a business suit lunged, swinging an arm at the teen as Nikita jumped down next to him, intercepting the thing's arm with her drawn sickle. The monster hissed as the sharp curved steel bit through flesh and bone, severing its arm at the elbow. In a swift motion, Nikita had wrapped the sickle around the beast's neck, and with a sharp jerk towards herself; cut through the man's spinal cord and freed his head from his body. The girl kicked the headless cadavre to the ground, motioning for Tank to keep going forward.

*POWM! POWM! Ping!* Jake forged ahead with a savage scream, firing the M1 Garand repeatedly into the thinning layer of the dead that separated them from the open road. The skull of one fairly exploded in a cascade of red blood, pink brain, and milky white bone and it crumpled to the ground. _CRACK!CRACRACK!CRACK! _Second turned into what seemed like hours as bullets entered flesh and hot brass fell to the ground. They were aware only of retreating. They knew one set of actions only.

_Breath. Pull the trigger until empty. Reload. Breath. Repeat._

**SPLAT. **

With a scream of exertion, Dempsey swung the M-1 Garand by the barrel like a baseball bat. Time slowed down as a head shattered, teeth, strings of meat and blood, shards of skull flew, an eyeball popping from its socket; the infected person's cranium smashed in like an overripe pumpkin. Takeo emptied his entire last magazine into what was once a woman in running clothes who toppled, Nikita drove her sickle into a dead teen's stomach, ripping it from abdomen and letting his guts spill to the pavement as Samantha clubbed the thing in its head as it fell; bringing the butt of her M-16 down again and again. They were free. Free; but not safe.

"NIKITA, NOW!" Jake screamed, scrambling to reload the M1 rifle while at the same time running backwards.

Nikita pivoted on her right foot as she ran, giving a kiss to the cheap storebought cigarette lighter in her hand for luck before flicking up a flame on it and throwing it towards the truck for all she was worth.

As Samantha saw the light, a shiver went up her spine and she stopped running. The warm buttery light gave her a good feeling inside, as it lit up the day area so bright that the rest of the world might as well have been sleeping. Such a beautiful torrent of orange and red and yellow and white, the very essence of power and destruction. This is what it looked like as the lighter caught to the gasoline soaked into the t shirt of a walking corpse, which then caught to the fumes in the air, which caught to the fumes emanating from the other once-humans' clothes, which transformed the air and sky into an enormous fireball, as if straight from the pits of Hades. Every single one of them stood, perplexed as the flesh was dissolved from their bones slowly but surely, and they started after their quarries despite the flames that clung to their entire being.

"God," Tank said aloud as they ran. "They look like they're made of fire…"

Soon after, the survivors began to succumb to the fire and drop to the ground; only shriveled, blackened corpses remaining.

"_Edward!_" Samantha swore. "_I will make you pay for this. Your tears will taste so sweet when you beg for your miserable life, licking my feet..."_

She smiled to herself. Funny how a single thought could be both amusing and arousing at the same time.


	3. NOTICE

To all readers of my stories on , I'm here to inform you that I'll no longer be posting on here. I will repost and continue my stories on Deviantart. After a good cleaning up of everything grammar and plot-wise, I'll continue on that site. If you care to follow my stories despite this, then you can make an account and watch me; I would encourage you to do so rather than be incredibly lazy. Making a dA account is very easy and will take you like 5 minutes so please do. I'll be keeping this account on FF for a time for communicational purposes with some authors on here, but when I get around to it I WILL be deleting this account entirely.


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